Divisible pharmaceutical tablets have been known for some time. Such tablets generally allow a pharmaceutical composition to be provided to patients in a measured, predetermined dose. Should the patient be prescribed to, or otherwise desire to, sub-divide the predetermined dose into one or more smaller doses, she can break or fracture the divisible tablet along one or more score lines to form individual fragments or sub-portions of the tablet. Each sub-portion generally includes a fractional amount of pharmaceutical; with tablets often being divisible into equal portions, such as half portions, third portions, quarter portions, etc.
Many competing design goals exist which are relevant to divisible tablets. For example, such tablets should be relatively easy to divide so that patients (and/or medical professionals) can divide the tablets at will. However, such tablets should not be overly frangible; otherwise they may be unintentionally broken during packaging, storage or transport. Also, such tablets (and fractional portions of such tablets), should not be easily broken in general, otherwise the desired pharmaceutical content in the tablet (or the fractional portions of the tablet) may be altered due to crumbling, flaking, etc. In addition, such tablets should be consistently divisible into substantially constant, predictable fractional portions, so that any one of the fractional portions of the tablet does not contain a significantly greater or lesser amount of the pharmaceutical active ingredient than it is intended to contain. Further, tablets and capsules in general should be configured to facilitate relatively effortless deglutition by patients.